Job performance and attitudes of health personnel at sub district health promoting hospitals toward health consumer protection: A case study of Chaiyaphum province

Abstract

Introduction: Health consumer protection (HCP) which is one of the responsibilities of sub district health promoting hospitals (SD-HPHs) cover three main tasks, i.e. development and maintenance of HCP-related data base, community empowerment, and development and maintenance of surveillance system for health risk related to drugs and health products. Objectives: This study aimed to identify job performance and attitudes toward health consumer protection among health personnel at sub district health promoting hospitals in Chaiyaphum province. Methods: Postal self-administered questionnaires were used to collect data from 167 health personnel who were in charge of HCP at sub district health promoting hospitals in Chaiyaphum province. Job performance was measured with 22 job items. One score was given to each job item being conducted. Attitudes toward the benefit of HCP to public (3 items), job satisfaction (5 items), and acceptance of responsibilities in HCP (4 items) were measured with 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).  Results: At the completion of the data collection, 66 questionnaires were returned, giving the response rate of 39.5%. The majority of the respondents were male (51.5%).The mean age was 41.7 years old (SD 9.8). The mean duration of working in the area of HCP was 12.6 years (SD 9.2). The mean score of job performance was 14.4 (SD 6.1). Only 27 SD-HPHs (40.9%) conducted > 18 job items (80% of the job items). The mean score of the attitude was 3.6 (SD 1.1), 3.5 (SD 0.9) for job satisfaction, and of 3.6 (SD 1.1) for acceptance of responsibilities . Conclusion: Although the respondents appeared to have positive attitudes toward HCP, satisfy with the job and accept their responsibilities being assigned to them, their performances were still at moderate level. An in-depth study to identify barriers to job performance, including factors determining job performance is needed.